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Mobile Telepresence Robots in Education: Strengths, Opportunities, Weaknesses, and Challenges

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Educating for a New Future: Making Sense of Technology-Enhanced Learning Adoption (EC-TEL 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 13450))

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Abstract

A mobile telepresence robot (MTR) is a semi-autonomous robot whose movement and interaction with its surrounding environment is controlled by a person from a distance. In education, MTR enable learners or educators to virtually participate in a class from a distance. TRinE: Telepresence Robots in Education is an EU project that aims at providing an interactive toolkit to support educators, learners, and others in order to integrate MTR in education. During January and February 2022, project’s partners conducted a qualitative study to collect the experiences and views of educators, learners, and other stakeholders (i.e., administrators, technical support staff, librarians) regarding the use of MTR in education across Austria, Germany, Greece, France, Iceland, Malta, and USA. A total of 19 persons were interviewed and 66 persons participated in 12 focus groups discussions. The findings describe interviewees’ experiences with MTR in education as well as the views of interviewees and focus groups’ participants with regard to pros, cons, and recommendations of using MTR in education. These findings may help educational policy makers, educational institutes officials, educators, and others to efficiently integrate MTR in education.

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Acknowledgments

This publication was partially supported by Erasmus+ project “TRinE: Telepresence Robots in Education”. Project Reference: 2020-1-MT01-KA227-SCH-092408. This publication reflects the views only of the authors. The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Maria Perifanou & Anastasios A. Economides

  2. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Polina Häfner

  3. Danube University Krems, Krems, Austria

    Thomas Wernbacher

Authors
  1. Maria Perifanou
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  2. Anastasios A. Economides
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  3. Polina Häfner
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  4. Thomas Wernbacher
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Maria Perifanou .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Isabel Hilliger

  2. Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Pedro J. Muñoz-Merino

  3. KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Tinne De Laet

  4. Universidad de Valladolid, Valladolid, Spain

    Alejandro Ortega-Arranz

  5. The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

    Tracie Farrell

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Perifanou, M., Economides, A.A., Häfner, P., Wernbacher, T. (2022). Mobile Telepresence Robots in Education: Strengths, Opportunities, Weaknesses, and Challenges. In: Hilliger, I., Muñoz-Merino, P.J., De Laet, T., Ortega-Arranz, A., Farrell, T. (eds) Educating for a New Future: Making Sense of Technology-Enhanced Learning Adoption. EC-TEL 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13450. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16290-9_52

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16290-9_52

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